Friday, July 19, 2013

Songs I would like
to karaoke but haven’t for whatever reason (unavailability or the
below guidelines):

Most anything
by The Hold Steady but especially Your Little Hoodrat Friend
or Cattle and the Creeping Things.

Wish You
Were Here by Pink Floyd

Beyond
Belief by Elvis Costello

Mama Told Me
Not To Come (there is something about Three Dog Night and
karaoke for me)

R.E.M. (wrong
range but I would probably still try Don't Go Back to Rockville).

Pretzel
Logic by Steely Dan

Debra by
Beck (mainly just to do the line “I said 'Lady, step into my Hyundai'”).

My Karaoke
Guidelines:

Know the song.
Not just the chorus. Know the whole damn song.

The shorter the
better but four minutes is about the limit.

Repetition is
not your friend.

Keep it in your
range. This eliminates about 99% of recorded music for me.

Obscurity is
not your friend either.

It’s weird that I
like karaoke. It is still going to be a rarity for me to get up in
front of a bunch of strangers but with friends at Rock Box or
something like that I have a blast. The first time I ever did it was
sometime in the late 80’s at the Ram in U Village. Kim, Gene and I
were roaring drunk and there was a smallish crowd in the bar and
everyone absolutely sucked. Kim and I decided we would go up and do
I Shot The Sheriff, and as we were heading up to where the
mike was he mentioned “Oh, uh, by the way I don’t know anything
but the chorus so you’ll have to do the singing.” Fucker. Later
I was flirting with some girl and she offered to be my backup singer
if I went back up there so had my first solo with Takin’ Care
of Business. Shut up, it’s a fun song.

Anyway, even though
Do You Know What I Mean flirts with breaking guidelines 3 and
5 it tops my karaoke list. It’s a song that people tend to at
least recognize and the repetition gets broken up at least a little
bit, plus you have the little “hoo” in the middle of it that
makes it if you can hit it right. I’m also happy with it as an
entry here because when I told Marcy that it was going to be next she
said “That’s one of your top fifty songs?!” I thought
about that and realized that this was a song I loved as a kid when it
came out, have always been happy to hear, enjoy singing it 40 years
later and that’s enough reason for me.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Jason Isbell is playing a show at Neumo's on Sept. 10th. Yes, it's on a lame ass Tuesday but it's also only $17 and his newest album is AMAZING and I'm DYING to hear the songs live.
Cone on, I'll get the tix. You say "oh yeah".